Dave Hardy has the story. He was convicted back in June for accepting bribes from contractors, in the form of home improvements, so that they could keep lucrative city contracts.
Category: Anti-Gun Folks
Another Mental Exercise for the Bradyphile
I heard reports of Reasoned Discourse breaking out over at Common Gunsense, but my comments seem to have gotten approved. But I will offer another thought exercise for Ms. Japete. Consider this article from the UK talking about what a mess their gun laws have become. Ours are really not much better. The other side talks about working together, and arriving at common ground. The other side talks about the importance of universal background checks. But how dedicated is Ms. Japete and the Bradyphiles to that proposition? What follows is meant to be a mental exercise, not a proposition for a serious policy prescription.
What if gun owners finally accepted the Brady way and acquiesced to a licensing scheme, and for the sake of argument, let’s assume that it’s tied into the criminal databases so that it gets revoked immediately if you’re convicted of a disabling offense, or go bonkers and get involuntarily committed. Sounds good right? A Brady dream. Oh, but there’s a catch.
The license is available at any post office, costs five dollars, and is valid for as long as you aren’t convicted of a disabling offense. Licensed individuals in any state can buy, sell, trade, transport, and ship firearms to licensed individuals in any other state, or to import firearms from outside the United States. This means licensed individuals can buy firearms off the Internet. The license is also a valid license to carry a loaded firearm, concealed or otherwise, in all fifty states. There are no dealer or manufacturer FFLs. Dealers and manufacturers are only required to make sure their employees who handle guns or gun parts have a license. Non-licensees can possess firearms only under limited circumstances (such as taking someone target shooting, or if your non-licensed wife has to use your gun in self-defense, etc).
This is a general framework. Obviously there are details that would need to be filled in. But if this is not an acceptable regime to the Bradyphile, then the real concern has nothing to do with background checks, or it being “too easy for dangerous people to get guns.”
Only in Josh Horwitz’s World …
… would an ad that explicitly mocks and cheapens the “insurrectionists” among us, and encouraging people to change things through the ballot box, be taken that NRA “now appears to find its advocacy for insurrectionism humorous.” But that’s just how Josh Horwitz is trying to spin it. If the Bradys are good at polishing turds (a high art, it would seem), Horwitz is talented at knocking over the lego set and storming off to tell mom.
He then goes on to list the ways that Norris buys into the “insurrectionist theory” of the Second Amendment. Truth is, I think most people believe in an insurrectionist theory at some point. The question is where you think that point is. If Horwitz would seriously be the kind of guy that would have sat idly by and let the SS haul off his neighbors in cattle cars, I have to question his dedication to humanity. It’s perfectly fine to argue that there are many who draw the line too soon. It’s quite another thing to argue there’s no line to be found at all.
Polishing the Turd
The Brady folk have an annual report out. Joe Huffman notes that their main theme seems to be declaring victory because they didn’t lose everything. I do have to admit, they say you can’t polish a turd, but the Brady folks are very good at it, reading over their report. Comparing to previous years, they seem to be doing a bit better raising money from new members than in 2007, but worse than 2008. In addition, they seem to be doing a really poor job of keeping members, based on renewal income continuously dropping, despite general contributions to both the Campaign and the Center being up in 2009 over 2008. It’ll be interesting to see their 2009 Form 990s, when they become available.
Brady Bunch being reasonable?
From a 2009 article on a quadriplegic hunter:
Gun control advocates don’t oppose efforts by people with disabilities to hold firearms licenses.
“There are no categories of prohibited purchasers based on physical disabilities, nor do we think there ought to be, outside of reasonable commonsense prohibitions,” said Peter Hamm, spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the group named for former White House press secretary James Brady, who was paralyzed in a shooting in 1981. “If someone is not a convicted felon or hasn’t been found to be a danger to themselves due to mental illness and they believe they can handle a firearm, we support their right to purchase one.”
On the other side, yes. Out to ban every firearm immediately, perhaps not so much. The other side has learned from the last 10 years too. Less Carrie Nation, more Nelson Rockefeller. The drug laws of NY are called the Rockefeller laws for a reason; punishing harshly the use of guns drugs not “in common use”.
Demonizing objects, not behavior: The Demon Rum edition
We had family guests over for dinner Sunday night, and the conversation turned to gun rights (it wasn’t my fault, I swear). One of the topics that came up was “guns in bars”, as a relative had heard of what was likely the recent changes in the law in Tennessee, though Virginia’s silliness in regards to carry in a licensed establishment came up as well. Long and short of it, he came down on the side of banning carry in bars due to “drunks and yahoos” (paraphrased). When pressed to define what a “bar” was, he said “any licensed establishment”. When I queried about carrying in the dining room of, say, TGIFriday’s, he would have that forbidden as well.
Forbidding carriage of firearms in licensed establishments sounds superficially reasonable. After all, we’ve seen “that guy” who gets belligerent and rowdy after a few. But not everyone is “that guy”. Heck, most people in the dining room aren’t drinking at all; and not everyone in the bar itself are drinking to impairment. Banning legal carriage of firearms in a licensed establishment, or even an out-and-out bar, makes about as much sense as banning the carriage of keys into the same establishment in the name of preventing drunken driving. Drunks kill far more people with cars than they do with guns, but we recognize (mostly) that it is the act of drinking and driving that should be punished, not the car or the booze.
The most that a ban on guns in bars can do is make “that guy” go out to his car, for the gun in his glove compartment, or the tire iron, etc. Worst-case scenario is something similar to the Luby’s massacre, where “one more ban” failed to stop a killer, but disarmed someone who could have stopped him.
I have little issue with a properly owner posting their property as off-limits to firearms being carried by a person, it’s their property; as long as they’re willing to take the responsibility of defending my person while I cannot. I wonder how many would, though, considering the signs above every coat rack, and around most parking lots, I see that say “management is not responsible for lost or stolen items” . I choose not to leave my coats on racks I cannot see, and I don’t leave anything valuable in my car when parked.
I understand that the fight against allowing carry in bars in Tenessee is being led, in large part, by a bar owner who wants to make sure his competitors are forced to ban the carriage of firearms into their own establishments, so his prejudices don’t cost him business. Which is too bad – if he wants to limit his clientele, he can do so. Chik-Fil-A famously closes on Sundays, but the last I checked they don’t lobby for a nationwide Blue Law. The big national chain restaurants have differing policies on acceptance of firearms in restaurants, but they mostly appear to follow Starbuck’s lead on pushing for policies (IE, they don’t at all).
New York Times on SanFran Image Ban
The NYTimes has its expected take on the San Francisco transit authority’s allowing SAF to put up the posters for their shindig.
Bonus PSH in the last paragraph. A gardener who is not only hoplophobic, but aichmophobic? Really?
Brady Reaction Exactly as I Thought
It’s a shame I was too busy traveling to offer the prediction that the Brady folk would react to NRA refusal to endorse Harry Reid by trying to argue the Democrats can’t be good enough for NRA and that they have nothing to gain by supporting the Second Amendment. Because that’s exactly the argument Dennis Henigan is making.
San Francisco’s Lone Gun Store Fights to Reopen.
High Bridge Arms is fighting for their right to reopen the only gun store in San Francisco. Temporarily closed after 50 years in business, Steve Alcairo is having to fight the North Bernal Alliance and three other neighborhood groups in an effort to reopen. Many in that group feel “a laundry or a wine and cheese shop” would be better.
No Sense of Humor? Or Clamoring for Relevance?
CeaseFirePA are such a cheery bunch, telling we lawful gun owners how every time I pull the trigger, a kitten dies, or something like that. Now they are angry at Pat Toomey, who made the old joke that he thinks gun control is steady aim, and are claiming it shows he’s insensitive to victims of gun violence.
Because we all know the way you respect victims of gun violence is to support gun control. Locking up criminals who perpetrate gun violence? Can’t have that. But passing a Lost and Stolen ordinance will surely do the trick!